Drugs have long cast a shadow over Gordon’s life. He guessed that diners in his restaurants who take side plates to the loos were using them to snort coke — but he had no idea some of his staff were also taking the drug during their shifts. Using wipes that turn blue when cocaine is detected, he swabbed five staff loos and 12 used by diners at five of his London restaurants — and was horrified to discover cocaine in all of them. In one there was so much cocaine that the wipe turned the colour of a J Cloth.

Gordon says: “That was the shocking one. It looked like it had been doused in cocaine. It was a wake-up call. Right now I’m obviously concerned about my 750 staff in London. That’s my responsibility.”

So Gordon began investigating the cocaine trade in Britain, where 80 per cent of the drug comes from just one country — Colombia.

“More than 140,000 drug-related offences were committed last year, costing Britain over £10billion. People are making a lot of money out of generating a lot of misery.

“Cocaine-related deaths are reaching epidemic proportions.”

As part of his investigation, Gordon visited the London forensics lab where 70 per cent of cocaine seized in the UK is analysed.

During his visit 30 kilos of the drug were brought in, wrapped in rubber-coated blocks the size of paperback books, with a street value of £3million. Scientist Peter Caine showed Gordon two bottles of golden rum — one genuine, the other containing a quarter of a kilo of cocaine hydrochloride. A 25ml shot probably contains about eight grams of cocaine.

Peter says: “If you were to drink one mouthful you would die. Cocaine is very soluble — you can actually dissolve two grams in one millilitre of water.

“To get it back into powder form, just put it on a baking sheet and gently warm it until the liquid evaporates.”
Gordon was horrified at the plight of “swallower couriers” who bring drugs into the UK from Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras.

He was shown a graphic X-ray of a courier with 120 pellets of cocaine, weighing a total of two kilos, inside them. Tom Saggars, head of drugs intelligence at the National Crime Agency, tells Gordon: “That is going to pass through the intestine and is going to come out the way all food comes out. Then someone is going to sift through and pick the layers off that and then, in your restaurant, someone is going to snort it as a glamorous drug.

In the second episode Gordon meets Rachel, a mother-of-two whose life was almost ruined by cocaine. She used to have a house, mortgage and a well-paid job in finance but for 12 years she spent £800 a week on cocaine and now claims the only thing she owns is a television.

Rachel says: “It was like ordering a takeaway. I never had a time in 12 years when I couldn’t get it. It was always available.”

Gordon travels to South America to see for himself the illegal “cooking” process by which the drug is made.

Leaf it out . . . getting to grips with the coca plant used to make cocaine

He meets hired assassins and a big-time drug-smuggler, witnesses the immediate aftermath of a suspected coke-related murder and joins a Colombian anti-narcotics unit on a helicopter raid. Back home he is determined to rid his restaurants of cocaine — for good.

Any staff member with a problem will be offered professional, confidential counselling and in the most extreme cases, rehab.

Managers will also be trained to identify signs of cocaine use. Finally, the practice of customers taking side plates into the toilets will not be tolerated.

Today Gordon employs his late pal David’s son Jack, who is training to be a chef, like his dad.

He says: “I’m determined that neither Jack nor any of my staff fall victim to drugs as my friend David did.”

— Gordon Ramsay on Cocaine is on ITV tonight at 9pm. Part two is next Thursday.